British Airways | Sales & Marketing Speaker | Avios

As an International Sales & Marketing Speaker that does about 40 international flights a year, I have tried to stay faithful to British Airways.

A number of years ago Avios took over their frequent flyer programme and since then it has been a disaster.

Today I received their motivational newsletter that rewards their faithful travellers (I am a Silver member) and advised that from April they would be reducing the Avios miles on economy (unless you pay the most expensive option of travel) by 75%. This is stupid, crazy and will be chasing away many of their loyal travellers.

Take a look at the message below from their newsletter

Changes to how you earn your Avios.

We’ll make earning Avios on flights more aligned to the cabin you fly in and the different types of fares within that cabin. In practice this means that if you pay for a flexible ticket you will earn more Avios than the lowest priced ticket in the same cabin.

Our lowest priced tickets in Euro Traveller and World Traveller will award a minimum Avios of 25% per mile flown instead of 100%.

As a Silver member I was rewarded with 100%, this now changes to 50%

Changes to Silver Tier Bonus.

Silver Members’ Tier Bonus will change from 100% to 50%.

All this is happening as it is almost impossible to use your air miles. I tried booking a trip in July and there is no availability in any class to any airport on the Eastern side of America.

Every time I try to use my miles, almost the only class available is economy (if available), business and first never. Why should they reward their loyal customers when they can sell those same seats at rip-off prices.

I am now changing allegiance back to Virgin Atlantic who at least have some scruples and when I was on their programme I could always use their miles.

I feel so strongly about this message that I will be sharing it on all my social networks (about 1 million followers) making a video for my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/salestips (3 million views) and most importantly sharing this story with thousands of people in my audiences around the world where I speak about customer service and the companies that get it wrong.

If you feel the same, please comment and forward this to as many people as you can. Let the numbers speak and maybe (doubtful) British Airways will listen,

Frank Furness CSP CFP TOT is a professional speaker and trainer specialising in financial services sales and sales management. He has educated, entertained and inspired audiences in 53 countries. His publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. For more information or to sign up for the free ‘Sales Tips & Ideas’ newsletter, email frank@frankfurness.com and for resources take a look at http://www.frankfurness.com and http://www.technologytoolsforbusiness.com

 

NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to frank@frankfurness.com Take a look at other articles, free software and e-Books at http://www.frankfurness.com/

How to Develop and Promote Effective Newsletters | Sales & Marketing Speaker

Everyone should develop a 10 touch plan to stay in contact with their clients on a regular basis. The easiest way to do this is through an ezine or electronic newsletter.

This is a great way to share information, promote your products, and get feedback from your most important customers. Here are some pointers to creating a successful newsletter.

1.Have a Theme.
The largest pitfall to developing an effective newsletter is the lack of a theme. When creating newsletters on a regular basis, select a unique theme every month that appeals to your audience. Once you have identified a theme, be sure that your newsletter content focuses on that specific theme throughout its content. With my newsletter, I have a number of themes to suit my different audiences; sales, technology, speaking and motivation.

2. Allow for Easy Reading and Archiving
The first few seconds are your most important so make them count. Use big, bold headlines, and article descriptions, providing links to the full article or related content areas. Also, make it easy for subscribers to read back issues and put a link to the archive on your blogs and websites.

3. Use Graphics.
Producing a newsletter that's wall-to-wall text will not be able to keep the interest of even your most savvy reader. Include photographs and videos where possible. This will break up those large blocks of content and increase your newsletter's appeal. Make sure your graphics include links to the articles or products they reference as Internet browsers tend to click on pictures or graphics presented online.

4. Include Product or Service Information.
Internet users are very comfortable with product promotion especially when receiving free information or content. I always try to give a great deal of content as well as many free resources – take a look in the links section. Products or services that are closely aligned with the theme of your newsletter can be ideal. As a rule of thumb, keep the number of products you promote to three or less.

5. Be Viral.
Never assume that the person reading your newsletter signed up for it directly. In fact, you should encourage your readers to forward the newsletter to others who may be interested in the content you're providing. Make it easy for new users to sign up through a link in each edition of your newsletter. When users forward a copy to a friend, they can easily subscribe.

6. Place all your newsletter articles on your blog
This will attract a new audience who will pick up the articles from the internet, subscribe to your newsletter and eventually buy your products or services.

7. Ping your Blog
I use a website http://www.pingomatic.com to ping my blog, this is, in effect getting the message to most of the blog directories that I have new articles on my blog for viewing.

8. Submit your Newsletter to the top directories
This will find subscribers who are interested in your subject and encourage them to sign up. Here are some to consider:

Ezine Articles - http://my.ezinearticles.com/

Go Articles - http://goarticles.com/

Largearticle - http://largearticle.com/

Articlebase - http://www.articlesbase.com/

9. Have a second, short newsletter
I noticed that many of my CEO clients were too busy to read my normal long newsletter. I then produced a second newsletter with only five or six links to the newsletter articles now on my blog. This increased readership by 33%.

10. Promote your newsletter everywhere.
Promote your newsletter on your website, blogs, vlogs, articles and videos. I promote my newsletter on some of my YouTube videos and this has resulted in 10,000 new subscribers in the past year.

11. Find the right software for your newsletter.
I have two lists, my ‘A’ list which is people that I know or those who have seen me speak. For them I use Constant Contact and for my ‘B ‘ list which is subscribers from all over the world that I have never met, I use Infacta Groupmail.

Frank Furness CSP CFP TOT is a professional speaker and trainer specialising in financial services sales and sales management. He has educated, entertained and inspired audiences in 53 countries. His publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. For more information or to sign up for the free ‘Sales Tips & Ideas’ newsletter, email frank@frankfurness.com and for resources take a look at http://www.frankfurness.com and http://www.technologytoolsforbusiness.com

NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to frank@frankfurness.com Take a look at other articles, free software and e-Books at http://www.frankfurness.com/

How to Set Goals | Frank Furness | Sales & Marketing Speaker

I am so fortunate in my work to meet great achievers. The one thing they all have in common, whether they have great businesses or are Olympic sportspeople are that they are all goal setters.

I love sport so working with the British Olympic and cricket team was a real thrill. Since I was 16 I have always worked out in the gym (you wouldn’t say so looking at my body) and followed weight lifting as a sport. 

When I was presenting recently in Singapore, I noticed that one of the delegates was huge and I knew instantly that he was a serious body builder. After my talk I met with him and found out that two years ago he was Mr Universe. 

The main points that came from the chat were:

He had set himself the goal of winning Mr Universe 20 years ago. We all need to set ourselves long term goals and never, ever give up on them.

The most important thing in goal setting is to write down the goals and keep revising them. I have tried to do this since I bought my first course on goal setting in 1980. It is pretty scary looking back at those goals and seeing how many have been achieved.

Be specific about your goals. The more specific you are, the more focussed you will be.

Don’t give up – three years before Brian won Mr Universe he was involved in a horrific car accident. People wrote him off and said he would never do it. He believed he could – and did.

Do whatever it takes – Brian had to put in enormous training sessions after his accident, sometimes training four times a day. To build up his legs he did up to 2,000 reps a day – there are no rules, you make up the rules as needed

 Frank Furness CSP CFP TOT is a professional speaker and trainer specialising in sales, technology and sales management. He has educated, entertained and inspired audiences in 48 countries. His publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. For more information or to sign up for the free ‘Sales Tips & Ideas’ newsletter, email frank@frankfurness.com and for resources take a look at http://www.frankfurness.com and http://www.frankfurnessresources.com

 

NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to frank@frankfurness.com Take a look at other articles, free software and e-Books at http://www.frankfurness.com/